Apple To Launch Thinner, Lighter MacBook Pro Models With OLED Touch Bar, Touch ID In Fall (9to5mac.com)

Apple plans to refresh its MacBook Pro line later this year. The makeover will see both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models replace their function keys atop laptop keyboards with an OLED touch bar, according to a report. Both the models will also have Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and will support Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port, multiple outlets are reporting citing ever-so-reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The refreshed MacBook Pro model will be thinner and lighter as well. There's no word on if -- and when -- the MacBook Air lineup will receive a refresh.

Comments

Apple is copying...Lenovo?

[blackomegax]

Lenovo tried getting rid of F-keys with a touch bar in the X1. It failed SPECTACULARLY. I suspect the same will happen to Apple here. Professionals use F-keys. A lot. and not being able to touch type them is a glorious, horrible, pain in the ASS.

Mac Pro, want

[fyngyrz]

No interest at ALL in a macbook. Miserable chicklet keys, extremely limited I/O, small display... meh.

I would be interested (VERY!) in a new Mac Pro if they go back to a real computer case that can hold multiple drives, allows memory expansion, choice of and multiples of, graphics cards, a reasonable measure of physical security (a surface full of desk warts I most definitely do NOT want.) The current round model simply drove me to EBay to buy older units. I'd be interested in a couple of minis, too, if they were still actually upgrading them instead of downgrading them. Apple's choosing to go backwards with CPU capacity and memory upgradability closed the mini door pretty sharply.

Honestly, I think Apple has lost their way in the computer space. They've left a trail of severely buggy, unfixed OS's behind them, broken applications and services, dropped support for various aspects of the system, pretty much hosed the app store, limited (or eliminated) expandability and choice, built a bewilderingly non-functional macpro, knocked the mini back to much less of a computer than it used to be, and are pathologically fixed on the "thinner, thinner" mantra and associated tunnel-vision-like goals while functionality and bugfixing goes wanting.

I like working with OS X, but without the company having a decent vision, I can't move along with Apple, I just hang with my current OS level and hardware, or buy more hardware from the same series off EBay, and continue waiting to see if Apple is going to come to their senses, or not. I test my commercial and free software development under the latest OS X, but I don't use it, because it simply isn't functional enough. Things like missing PPC emulation are show-stoppers for me, I have many thousands of $ of PPC apps that work just fine and no intention of abandoning them, nor is it convenient to only run them in a VM. Nothing else I can really do. Don't like Windows, been there, been burned by Microsoft, not going back; and until/unless linux builds in a standard GUI layer I can depend upon without compromising my commercial software development financially or GPL-wise, it's not even in the running.